Polly Toynbee (Welfare dependency isn't the problem. Pitiful pay is, 1 November) is undoubtedly right to point to widespread passivity against the background of "pitiful pay" for many and eroding real wages for many more. Some of the most drastic restrictions on trade union activity in the western world are part of the explanation. But when I scoured the pages of the same edition of the Guardian, I could not find a single mention of the 31 October strike by tens of thousands of members of three unions – Unison, Unite and the UCU – taking co-ordinated action for the first time across Britain's universities over the issue of endemically low pay.
For the majority of direct employees the real value of pay has shrunk by nearly 15% in the past five years, while thousands in the higher education sector work on hourly rates well below the current standards for the "living wage", not to mention thousands more on outsourced contracts on the £6.31 an hour national minimum. And as in the FTSE boardrooms, the salaries of university chancellors and other executives continues to balloon, with more than half now on remuneration packages exceeding £250,000 a year. The fact that thousands were and remain prepared to take a stand over pay in a sector hardly renowned for union militancy surely warranted coverage in Britain's foremost liberal daily.
George Binette
Unison, Camden branch secretary
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